


Between the Color Schemes of Black & White

by VJR22_6



Series: Seeing Colors-A Soulmate AU [1]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate AU, idk how to tag them but theyre kinda important, this is a lena SABREWING household thank you very much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VJR22_6/pseuds/VJR22_6
Summary: Lena saw grayscale until she met Webby, and from there learned the rest of the rainbow as she learned of a world outside of Magica's reach.





	Between the Color Schemes of Black & White

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank my new friend on Tumblr for the title idea. It's a lyric from the Transit song "The Answer Comes in Time." You're so amazing and I hope you like this! I also want to thank my super supportive Discord group for listening to me talk about this AU. You guys are so sweet!

Lena doesn’t know about soulmates for a long time. After all, Magica was the one to teach her everything she “needed to know,” and soulmates didn’t make the witch’s list. Besides, Lena’s pretty sure that Magica doesn’t have any soulmates, anyway. Maybe she doesn’t believe in them.

The day that things change is warm, and Magica is quiet within her spellbound amulet. Lena can almost forget her aunt is there as she writes little notes in bottles. A bouncy, loud girl comes across the stepping stones, babbling so that Lena can hardly make sense of-

Her outfit isn’t gray. Everything is gray, shades of charcoal and smoke, except this new girl. Her sleeves, collar, and a neat little bow in her hair, they’re… pink. Soft, bright, brand-new pink.

They start off on their adventure, and Lena doesn’t mention it because she’s having fun for once. She doesn’t want Webby to think she’s crazy. She could just be seeing things. But then they pass by a store window on the way to the junkyard, and the color in her hair is the same gentle, beautiful color in a world without any at all.

The night goes on and Lena meets the triplets. At first, they’re grays too, until they come to her rescue. Then, under the theatre lights, she sees three new colors, easing into her vision. Red on Beagle Boy shirts, blue in the water as they row away, green in the mansion’s landscaping as they part ways. It rains a few days later, and as the clouds clear she sees a rainbow, a few of the stripes vivid now.

She hopes, with all her secret heart has, that she will someday know what the rest look like.

On their first sleepover, Webby presents Lena with a woven bracelet. It’s thin, stretchy, and she tucks it under her sleeve to keep it safe because it has a new color. She examines it later, under the deck of the borrowed boat. She’s scared of what it means, curious and in awe of what it looks like. She hasn’t met anyone new, where could it have come from?

The money shark is defeated, and she and Webby return to the mansion. They settle down to sleep and the room is quiet for a while. She’s almost drifted off before Webby, in the smallest, softest voice, asks, “Is your bracelet okay? I mean, I didn’t want to pick colors you wouldn’t see and since I- well, since that blue’s yours, I thought….”

“It’s perfect, Pink,” she whispers back. The nickname is her way of saying all the things she doesn’t know words for. Her way of letting Webby know that she gives Lena color, too, and that their friendship is worth more than bracelets can say.

Weeks pass, and horrors… horrors happen, and Lena can’t control anything. She does her best to keep her soulmates safe, though, by fighting Magica off. And it works, sort-of. The shadow realm is an endless night, and she says as much to the others later, when she’s free. Through it all, the blacks and grays and inverse-of-normal kind of world, she sees her reflection as her own sparkling blue, and Webby leads her through the world, carrying pink even if Lena can’t see it from the shadow side.

Then that fateful library day comes along, and Webby introduces herself to Violet Sabrewing, and Lena’s horrified. She remembers a world without any colors at all, a world without Webby, and uses everything she’s got to fight not to go back. She’s read up on soulmates by now, and she knows losing a soulmate will cause their color to fade. If Webby gets a new best friend, she’ll… she’ll forget, and does that mean Lena will lose her pink? Her hope-filled, happy pink, and all the memories full of it?

She spends the evening fighting for her friend, and Violet ends up chasing Webby alongside her, eyes full of fearful desperation. “If she goes out that door, we may lose her forever!”

In her voice, Lena hears it. She might not understand the Viking talk, or what the weird dice say, or know the names of these white creatures. There’s a familiar something in that voice, though, that Lena knows all-too-well. Violet’s seen that particular pink. Probably in a flash of new-ness, like that day at the amphitheater.

“Not on my watch,” Lena says, with a fierceness she didn’t know she had. She will not let anyone else hurt like she has been hurting, not if she can help it. “Come on, nerd. Let’s make magic.”

She remembers the chant, the bracelets, the strength she felt on that first day wearing her bracelet. It comes back to her so easily, and she pulls Webby back with Violet’s help. The shadows dissolve, and with them Lena, but she’s not afraid this time. She and Webby offer Violet a place in their circle, too, just living in that moment of togetherness.

And then, in a spectacular flash of light and smoke, blue light and smoke, she’s whole again.

Later, while Webby’s fixing their bracelets, Vi leans in and asks, “In the smoke, did you see it?”  
“My color,” Lena realizes, and their eyes meet. She won’t tell Violet she still sees the same colors, yet. Maybe… maybe Lena just needs some time to adjust after all that time in the Shadow Realm. Vi is so excited when she learns about blue, shimmering beautiful blue. Only a person like Magica would crush her by saying the relationship wasn’t mutual.

She tries giving it time. Vi takes her back to her place, after the sleepover, and offers her the spare bed in her bedroom. “For a few days of magical observation,” she says to her dads when they ask. “Just a few days.”

A few days turns into a few weeks, and then a month has gone by, and Lena still doesn’t see any colors for Vi. She accepts that maybe she’s broken, after all that shadow time, and settles in well enough with the Sabrewings. It’s easy to do; everything is scheduled onto the calendar in the kitchen, there are routines to follow, and the house is quiet most of the day. It’s so unlike the mansion in every way.

Verdin, tall and smart, is a lawyer. He drives Violet to school on weekdays, then goes to his office to work until the afternoons. During her second week of stay, he takes her to work with him and shows her around his office. At noon, they take their lunches, which he’d handmade that morning, up to the roof. There, he teaches her how to point out shapes in the clouds, and she finds herself underneath a sky of mythical creatures, like sword-horses and money sharks. He settles an affectionate hand on her shoulder, just like he does with Vi, and tells her that she has a beautiful imagination.

When she turns to look at him, she finds warmth in his eyes and a brand-new dandelion color on his facial feathers smiling down at her.

Andean is a writer, prone to insomnia like Lena is. He teaches her ways to quiet her loud thoughts at night and how to breathe if it gets to be too much. On Saturdays he and Violet volunteer at the library, and he brings books back to read to the two girls before bed each night. One rainy Sunday Vi begs for the next chapter in their bedtime mystery, so while she and Verdin play chess, Lena curls up in the bay window and listens. She learns what indigo looks like that day, watching him gesture dramatically and read the dialogue in various voices designed to make them laugh.

Violet giggles every few lines. Lena smiles a little, and feels a delightful peace washing over her.

That peace becomes permanence after almost two months with the Sabrewings. They offer to adopt her if she wants them, wants their family to become hers. And she does, of course she does! She nods, near speechless, and murmurs a “yeah” before falling into their open arms.

She turns, dragging Vi into the hug, and through the blur of joyful tears she sees the one color she’s been chasing. Violet. Her new sister’s face is beautiful, soft purple, the color of her name, and it’s perhaps the most beautiful color she’s ever known.

The pictures on the walls are swapped out for newer ones. Vi picks some to change out-mostly ones she thinks she looks awful in-and they take replacements together. Some are impromptu memories, like her and Vi standing on the seashore at sunset, on a family walk on the beach. Others were professional shots, when they all dressed to match and sat down ever-so-particularly in a studio. In all of them, she’s smiling brightly because she hasn’t seen a patch of missing-color-gray in weeks.

The day they finalize her adoption, it rains, and as they walk out of the courthouse the sky is clearing. Lena’s tucked between her dads as they walk down the steps, the envelope of forms clutched in one hand. Andean holds her other, Verdin’s hand guiding her from her shoulder. Ahead of them, Violet is skipping around puddles, flicking water outward with the tips of her shoes.

And she looks up, surrounded by the people she loves most, and between the clouds, sees a rainbow. This time, all the colors are there, and Lena knows she’s loved because she puts the blue in theirs.


End file.
